by JANRAE FRANK
He gave her a quick pardon-me dip of his shoulders before running on to overtake his companions. She stared after him, likening his dirt to the dye on her skin, feeling an odd dip in her stomach. She shook herself and walked on.
She tried the smoked salmon and dipped raw clams in a fiery sauce at a small eatery, sitting at one of the little tables under a woven cedar awning. She bought two small blackberry cakes, put one in her pocket, and nibbled the other as she walked. She kept thinking about Aejys Rowan. The older woman stirred a longing in her heart and body that went beyond anything she had experienced. She had had only a few lovers over the years, brief, intense liaisons that faded quickly to comfortable friendship. Like many races and creatures hard pressed by violent forces, the Sharani came to sexual maturity very young. That and a long, disease resistant life span had allowed the Sharani to out breed their losses in the constant skirmishing with the Waejontori and other monstrous creatures. It was not unusual for a Sharani woman to start a new family at seventy. Tamlestari had taken her first lover at eleven. But none of those she had lain with over the years had ever affected her this intensely before. She wanted Aejys Rowan and did not quite know how to approach her: she had never been drawn to an older woman before. Even if she could figure it out, she could not allow herself to take advantage of Aejys' grief by trying to climb into Brendorn's place in the lapsed paladin's bed.
She angled back through town to the waterfront and stood for a time staring out across the water. It went out across the horizon forever, stretching with apparent infiniteness before her. She felt diminished by the size of it, melancholy aching through her mind and body. Its vastness redefined her image of reality, which had always been bounded by mountains, trees, and walls and shrank her world almost into meaninglessness. The sea frightened and attracted her at the same time; drawing her the way a flame draws a moth knowing it will get burned. So she looked for a way to get closer to it.
Gradually the docks and quays gave way to sandy beach. The Sharani watched a small crowd of children run bare foot along the edge of the water, the tide rippling up across their feet, and then retreating to come again. They carried buckets and small shovels, stopping now and again to dig at the sand with their toes as if hunting something.
Tamlestari sat down on a rocky outcropping and pulled off her boots. She tucked them under her arm and walked down to the water. As it eddied toward her, her stomach felt ready to drop out of her body and she retreated. She was just being silly and foolish, she told herself, but she had never encountered such a vast amount of water before or had it chase her up the shore. Tamlestari approached the retreating water again, determined to see what it felt like only to move once more just out of its reach.
Laughter erupted behind her and Tamlestari turned, blushing furiously.
"Hey, landsmon! Water doesn't bite you know!" A boy of sixteen laughed. Five or six smaller ones, boys and girls, crowded around him, woven baskets and small wooden spades in hand. They giggled. They were more brown than bronze, their hair a shiny blue-black worn in two braids.
"I have never seen the sea before," Tamlestari said.
The tall youth took her measure, catching the glint of chain mail at the edge of her shirt and the sword at her side. Then black eyes met the slanted green ones and he gasped. "I've never seen your kind before!"
"Nor I yours," Tamlestari answered, facing him down squarely, left hand on her hip and her right thumbing the pommel of her sword.
"You should not mess with what you don't know, Birch," said a rough-edged voice.
All eyes turned to Josh. The sot had been lying beneath the shadow of a small rocky outcropping, listening to the sea when Tamlestari's voice attracted his attention. He sat up, his clothes coated in sand, stained from last night's binge and wet from chasing waves; sand drying into a crust in his beard and hair. He looked more like some strange sea-born creature than a mon just then.
The Kwaklahmyn youth shrugged. "We were not bothering her. We are digging clams. Come along, landsmon, tell us news of the world and we'll help you get your feet wet. That was what you were trying to do, wasn't it?"
One of the girls tugged at Tamlestari's boots. "Put them over there."
Josh crossed the strand to take the boots himself. "Off with you! I'll be talking to Branch about your mistreating strangers!"
The younger children snapped into silence, staring at their feet and then fleeing down the beach.
Birch stood his ground, glaring. "I did not intend any harm. You have no reason to complain to my grandfather."
"Maybe," Josh said, his words soft with an odd indecipherable twist. "But I've watched you dunk foreigners before."
The edge of Birch's mouth twitched. "No harm to them."
"There's no harm in you, Birch," Josh said, pulling a silver gilt flask from his pocket, "just mischief. This one's my friend." He took a swig and offered it to Tamlestari who shook her head.
Birch stalked off.
"You are my friend, aren't you?" Josh looked deeply into Tamlestari's eyes, searching for something.
Tamlestari wondered what that was. She read in Josh's eyes a kindness and compassion so intense that she thought it must tear his heart and soul to feel it. "Yes." She took his hand, her shields snapping into place so she would not accidentally start reading his body chemistry.
They walked to a cluster of large rocks. There they sat, Josh cross-legged and Tamlestari with her feet hanging down for the water to eddy across them.
"Warm wet sand feels good squishing between your toes," Josh told her, taking another swig.
"Do you always drink so much?"
Josh shrugged. "Sometimes."
"Do you ever try not to?"
"Sometimes."
"Tagalong told me that strange things happen when you drink."
Josh picked up a bit of shell, examining it carefully, and then scrapping at the rock with it. "That's why I try to stop. But I can't." He picked up a tiny sliver of driftwood, digging the sand from the shell, refusing to meet her eyes.
"Maybe I can help," Tamlestari retrieved his hand, gently pulling the shell from his grip. "You know what I am?"
Josh nodded. "Reader."
"May I?"
Josh, looking uneasy, retrieved his shell and began scraping it against the rock again in a nervous motion. "Guess so. Just don't tell me anything about me."
Tamlestari opened her awareness. She felt the texture of his skin, the rough weather-reddened hands ridged with broad veins and tendon. They were honest hands that had worked hard; that begged drinks but never stole to buy them. She sensed the wasted pattern of his muscles that had once been strong, that could still be again; and she found the damaged liver and other ailing organs: He had taken to drink and the drink had eaten him alive. She guessed the sot had five years maybe a little more left of life if he kept drinking. That saddened her because he was a kind mon. So she turned her attention away and saw the cells of his body as a golden grid work with a pattern of glistening silver-white light rippling through them, which she had never seen before. She found the holadil lodged within them. The silver-white light became brighter and brighter. There would be no way to get it out of his system. A sharp tingling grew in back of Tamlestari's throat and crawled up the base of her neck, spreading through her head. It was the taste of power and it felt as though it were reaching out for her. Tamlestari released Josh with a yelp, "Mage!"
Josh blanched, shaking his head like a dog that had bitten down on its own tongue. He snatched Tamlestari's boots and fled with them down the strand.
"Josh! Come back! My boots!" She scrambled after him, but the sharp rocks hurt her feet and she thought she would never get back onto the soft sand. By that time Josh, moving at a pace that astonished her, was halfway to a low pole fence surrounding a dozen plank houses. Once on the sand, the sylvan fleetness she inherited from her ma'aram showed and she gained on the sot. She ran so lightly that her flying feet left no mark. Josh opened the gate and fled inside.
Tamlestari halted and stared through.
A tall pole wrought in strange animal shapes and faces stood before the largest house. The carven beak of a huge bird, the eyes and features depicted in heavy lines of black, filled in with white and a rusty red, thrust out over the door. A mon, his skin a shade more brown and less bronze than the Sharani, sat upon a tree round. He wore soft, deerskin breeches, a loose sleeved black shirt and soft boots. He held a small piece of wood in his hand, working its surface slowly with a small knife.
"What is that?" Tamlestari asked, nodding at the pole as she opened the gate and stepped inside.
The man looked up. His lower lip hung away from his teeth, weighted down by a heavy labret. He had broad, high cheekbones, a strong cleft chin, full lips and large, black, long-lashed eyes. "That is the totem of my clan. You read it from the bottom up."
"Totem?"
The man nodded, pointing to the lowest figure on the totem, a bird with a tremendous beak. "That is Raven. He found our people in a clam shell."
"A clam shell?" Tamlestari thought for a moment of how small the clams she had eaten were. "Clams are so small..."
The Kwaklahmyn shaman smiled. "Yes. And when the old world grew bleak for my people Raven opened a gate and brought us here. He gave us seeds to plant and fed us so that we would not eat them. All that grows on the northwest coast grew from the seeds of Raven."
"Thank you," Tamlestari said politely. "I am looking for a mon who stole my boots, Josh."
He stood, laying aside his work, and touched her hair much as Aejys had done. "You are sylvan?"
"Part," Tamlestari nodded, wondering where this was going; yet feeling neither threat nor intrusion in his words and touch.
"You should not stain the lovely gold the gods have given you."
"I am looking for Josh," Tamlestari repeated.
Before she could react the man had seized her hair with a twist and slashed away the black from the base of her neck down. She sprang back, alarmed, her sword clearing its sheath and then returning: He could have cut her throat as easily as he did her hair.
He sheathed the little blade. "Give this to the Gods of the Waves," he placed her shorn hair in her hands, "and they will give you your hearts desire."
Tamlestari dropped cross-legged on the sand, feeling stunned and confused, staring at her locks. The ha'taren only cut their hair as a sign of sorrow or an offering to their god in time of desperate need. What would she tell the others? That a crazy old mon cut her hair off? "What I want," she said slowly, "is my boots."
"I have them," the mon said, bringing them from behind his tree round. "You frightened Josh. He is hiding in the smoke house."
"I don't understand ... any of this."
He nodded solicitously. "Most do not. I am Branch, shaman and leader to my people here. They call me that because I sought for god in the top of a sacred tree. The old shaman caught me. I was so frightened by his wrath I fell out. I broke nearly every branch I grabbed at. But when I hit the ground there was not a scratch or bruise upon me.
"Put your boots on. Let me tell you about Josh. I have known him since he was as small as my grandchildren. He was found as a small child by a sailor on a nearby island. There are hundreds of islands along the northwest coast. The sailor's ship put in for water and supplies, only to find the village destroyed. Josh lived only because his dying mother covered him with her own body. The sailor took him in and raised him with his own son like they were brothers. But when Josh was six he started showing signs of having the magic. Well, the sailor was frightened of magic, so he found a back alley mage to burn the magic out of Josh."
"No," Tamlestari hissed in utter horror. "A child's soul and body should never be damaged that way."
"As a Reader ... I know what you are ... you understand that, but Josh's foster-father did not know or he simply did not care. That's not important. Add in to that, Josh's foster-father and brother were killed when an archenwyrm destroyed their ship just off the blowholes – same one Aejys killed – and almost got Josh also. He saw them eaten alive and he's been drunk ever since. Aejys complicated things with the holadil, giving him the magic back sideways."
"He must stop drinking. It's not a good thing."
"Don't make judgments," the shaman said sharply. "Aejys doesn't. I don't. Josh hurts no one but himself. He's helped quite a few."
"But it's killing him," she protested.
"It's his life. Now come on and we will try to coax him out."
* * * *
Tamlestari slipped out of the Cock and Boar by way of the back stairs into the courtyard. The night was still and very quiet. Mist had rolled in off the sea and the night was clothed in deep white. The street lamps at the corners shone like bright will'o'wisps where all else lay in shadows. She walked toward the beach, knowing the paths from her previous days of wandering the city. The tall houses, sharing walls in narrow huddles along the silent lanes cast empty eyes at the young paladin as she walked. Nothing seemed familiar, as if the life that had been there by daylight had died in the witching hours before the dawn.
Branch's words concerning the significance of her midnight offering hovered in her thoughts. Never before had she wanted anyone as intensely as she did Aejys Rowan. She imagined the touch of Aejys' lips upon her own with profound longing, dreaming of her hands upon her young breasts. She had no right to ask it, for she knew well the grief that Aejys felt concerning Brendorn. Tamlestari could not dream of replacing Brendorn in the lapsed paladin's heart – and yet she dreamed and in her dreams she longed for that touch and the quickening of its expression. She knew nothing of the totems of which Branch spoke on those past days, and yet she could only pray that it might be. Guilt and desire warred within her and, at times, she faltered in her steps, but continued on. Could love, as deeply as she felt it, be wrong? Her mind winced away from it, falling slave to her emotions – and love enslaved her to its needs. The young paladin could only say, to herself, that she would surely die without the love of Aejys Rowan.
Tamlestari found her way to the small promontory where she had sat with Josh. The tide was up and the spray misted about her as she settled cross-legged upon it. The tide had risen so deeply that where she had earlier sat, her ankles wet by the tide, she could now have felt it to her knees. She gazed first at the full moon and then the waters, trying to visualize the sea-wolf and Raven as the shaman had bid her. She took the hair, which Branch had severed from her head, and watched the tide change as she sat above it. She cast her hair upon the retreating waters and said "Aejys Rowan."
The water lifted the hair and carried it away to places unimaginable to Tamlestari.
* * * *
Cassana sat at a small rectangular table in the parlor of the room she shared with Tamlestari. Three well-cushioned chairs flanked the table. Thick rugs covered the hardwood floor. A soft couch pressed the west wall; multi-colored pillows lay in the corners. The wind blew strongly outside, heralding an early autumn while it rattled the trees. The little pile of ten rings; two set with stones, one a ruby, the other a bit of onyx; four simple bands of gold, one of them must have belonged to a child for it was very small; and four wide silver bands covered in intricate sylvan runes.
The early morning sun thrust glowing lances of gold across the table. Where it touched her hands the scars stood out in sharp relief; pink-white ridges against her dark skin.
Fourteen years today...
Cassana separated the rings into three clusters. Her right hand ached sharply from the early chill and she rubbed it absently; remembering with an equal, but non-physical ache: They drove knives through my hands.
She turned the ruby in her hands and found a tiny catch. Her pulse quickened with the memories. The catch opened. Behind it was a signet. A dove gripping a thorn. It belonged to one of the lesser Sharani barons, something a younger daughter might have. She would need to find out if any were missing. This is, if memory serves, a vassal of Rowanslea.
They stank of sweat and booze and u
rine. Two had hold of Colin, pinning him down with a knee in the small of his back and knife to his throat. A wave of helpless swept her as she saw victory snatched from her grasp. She knelt and laid her sword on the ground.
Cassana closed her eyes for a moment trying to relax, to get her focus back, to slow her breathing. She re-opened her eyes. The onyx ring had nothing on it to give her any clue as to its origins.
Why now? I have not remembered all of this in years... I thought I was past this...
She picked up one of the golden bands. Cassana found nothing unusual about it at first glance. Just a very plain golden band, heavy in her hand.
The weight of the myn, pressing down on her, pulling her legs apart, forcing them apart. The searing pain of the knives going through her hands. The pressure of their bodies on hers, their rancid odors. Pressure. Tearing at her inside and outside. The stickiness, smelliness of their seed oozing from her.
Revulsion rose up in Cassana's stomach. She left the ring on the table, rose and went stiffly to the window, controlling an urge to vomit. Her whole body heaved and shuddered, but nothing came out. She gulped in the fresh outside air. Slowly the sensations subsided. "We all have our scars, Aejys," she muttered to herself, "our griefs. It's what we do with them that matters."
She returned to the table, this time sitting on the opposite side. From that angle the sunlight glanced along the inside of the nearest band. The touch of the morning light brought forth a rune and a name. Marveling, Cassana picked it up and held it to catch even more light.
Colin lay in a corner bound and forgotten. All the myn were so eager to have their turn shoving inside her that they had left no one to threaten him. Cassana jerked her hands from the ground, bringing the knives with her. She twisted and kicked free of the myn, while pulling the first blade from her hand with her mouth. She ignored the pain, gripping the knives that had held her. She slashed the throats of the two nearest, then methodically began to butcher the rest. The leader went last. He begged for mercy, but by then mercy was no longer part of the young girl's vocabulary. She slit his stomach and left him clutching at his spilling entrails. Then she freed Colin and they left.